Photos From the Early Days of New York's Tech Scene

Bell Labs engineers working on the Telstar 1 in 1961. In a collaboration with US, UK and French broadcasting agencies, the satellite launched on July 10, 1962. Its first live broadcast was 13 days later, hosted by Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and Richard Dimbleby.

Max Mathews with his radio batons. Mathews is considered to be the father of computer music. Arthur C. Clarke saw him performing on an IBM 704 computer while visiting him at Bell Labs in 1961, and it inspired the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) where HAL 9000 sings “Daisy Bell.”

A photo of the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) operator console, 1948. The SSEC was the first computer to store data, and calculated the position of the moon and planets. It boasted 12,500 vacuum tubes and over 21,000 relays, operating at IBM’s New York headquarters from 1948 to 1952. Developed by astronomer Wallace Eckert at Columbia University, it was the last electromagnetic calculator ever built.

IBM created a theater known as “the egg” for its Eero Saarinen-designed pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. People accessed the theater through a “people wall” that carried 500 visitors into the theater every 15 minutes. There, they learned about the information machine through a short film called “THINK” by designers Charles and Ray Eames.

IBM’s focus on branding, design, marketing, and sales made products like its iconic 1961 Selectric typewriter irresistible to the public. It is emblematic of the company’s design under Eliot Noyes.

Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson in Washington talks with Bell Labs scientist Elizabeth A. Wood on a picturephone in New York, June 24 1964. The call took place during the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens. Bell Labs had experimented with videophones since the 1920s. The picture phone was cost-prohibitive, with a three-minute call costing $200 in today’s dollars. The service faded away in the 1970s.

Thomas Watson Jr. poses with an IBM 360, 1964. IBM’s System/360 was the first in a series of all-purpose machines that could perform almost any task by simply changing the software. It transformed computing and set the pattern for today’s world of multipurpose machines.

Tennis for Two, 1958. The simple, electronic bouncing ball game was developed by William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island for a visitor’s day. One of several early examples, Tennis for Two paved the way for modern video games.

IBM 5150 personal computer, 1981. Miniaturization allowed for printing transistors on microchips inside personal computers. By the late ‘80s, more than two million components could fit on a fingernail-sized chip. The IBM Personal Computer appeared in offices across America.

Marilyn Wescoff and Ruth Lichterman wire the right side of an Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), developed by a Jean Bartik, Frances Bilas and other women for the Army during World War II. Women dominated computer programming in the 1940s. They were called “computers,” just as people who operate typewriters were once called “typewriters.”

Paul Rand’s World’s Fair IBM Booklet, 1964. Using the World’s Fair as a “coming out party” for the information age, IBM commissioned Madison Avenue designers like Paul Rand to create its brand identity.

All early computers have Thomas Edison to thank. While tweaking the light bulb, Edison discovered thermionic emission. Almost 30 years later, physicist John Fleming used it to create the vacuum tube. Vacuum tubes were the voltage regulators and current amplifiers at the heart of radios and other electronic devices, including computers.

Filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek collaborated with Kenneth Knowlton at Bell Laboratories in the 1960s to create eight abstract films made up of cathode-ray mosaics. Pictured here is a 16mm video still from "Poemfield # 2,” created between 1966 and 1971. The soundtrack was by Paul Motion.

Share

Silicon Valley may be the center of the tech universe, but an exhibition at the New York Historical Society makes a compelling argument that New York played an equally vital role in starting the digital revolution.

Silicon City: Computer History Made in New York explores the Big Apple's early tech industry, and how it ushered in the information age. The exhibition, sponsored in part by several tech companies, features 300 photos and artifacts, including Edison light bulbs and a Telstar satellite, created in and around New York. The city was home to tech giants like Samuel F.B. Morse and frequented by Alexander Graham Bell, while Edison lived across the river in New Jersey. The lightbulb, the dial recorder, and the electric tabulating machine were among the things invented by New Yorkers, laying the foundation for the technological revolution.

"Up until the '80s, it really was all about New York," says curator Stephen Ediden.

The Stanford Industrial Park, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, the Homebrew Computer Club, and Xerox PARC, to name a few, might disagree with that assessment. But that doesn't mean New York didn't play a vital role in the growth of America's tech sector. Given its role in everything else, from art to finance, it was almost inevitable. "It was a finite area that people crossed and interrelated with each other all the time," Ediden says. "So for economics, business, art—all these things that you really need a core group of creative people to function—were all in New York from the early 19th century. And it was the development of that that led to major businesses like IBM and AT&T’s Bell Labs."

IBM and Bell Labs were to New York as Apple and Google are to Silicon Valley. IBM’s Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University created the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator. It was the first computer to ever store data, and scientists used it to calculate the positions of the moon and planets. Bell Labs worked with NASA to develop Telstar 1, the first communications satellite. On July 23, 1962, it broadcast the first satellite images of the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge.

The two companies had what the historical society dubs a "coming out party" at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens. IBM introduced a computer that could pull up a news story for any date. Bell Labs dazzled crowds with a "picturephone" that was the FaceTime of its day. "With the 1964 World Fair, IBM and others really made an attempt to make these machines available to the general public and make them see how these worked within their everyday lives," Ediden says.

Beyond technology, IBM and Bell Labs also fostered the team-oriented culture Silicon Valley is known for. IBM believed in creating spaces where employees could collaborate on ideas, and Bell Labs had a research wing where scientists could work on pet projects like the transistor radio. "When you go into Google, they have those photographs of everyone hanging out, playing games and eating great food," Edinen says. "The same idea really took place and was created in New York."

These days, Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley are two sides of the same coin. Many tech companies have offices in California and New York, and the Big Apple is matching the Bay Area in attracting entrepreneurs and innovators. Edinen hopes people take a moment to consider the city’s rich technological past. "Innovation is crucial," he says, "but you can’t really innovate unless you know [its] history."